Save One is out 🙂 It is 32,230 words long and it sits in the Young Adult and Dystopian genres. It can also be a little bit of a Coming of Age story as well.

It follows one individual Sauska Morin as she is accepted into the cryptanalyst school to become a code breaker. Her country has been at war with the South for the last few decades and she is needed to help break the codes. There she makes a close friend who is not having as good a time as her. During this time her younger brother is sent to army boot camp with the intention of becoming an infantryman. This does not bode well with Sauska because her two older brothers have died while in the army and as she experiences her life she begins to see that maybe her country isn’t as great as she thinks it is.

I began Save One around July of ’17. While it took two years to complete, I was not actively working on it all the time. In fact, I would do a few drafts in close succession and then nothing for months on end. The reason this story took a while to come out was because of; burnout, other stories taking my time and, the fact that it was not my most prized story at the time. I was constantly suffering ‘Shiney New Idea Syndrome’ during this time and it took a bit of a backburner until I finally decided to finish it.

Another reason why it took so long was that I was a bit hesitant in putting out the story was because I made the main character black and I am white. I made her a different race simply because I’ve always written white characters and it was a bit boring. And the idea of having more diverse characters was starting to become a thing that needs to happen. I’m worried that it’ll come off wrong, but I’m not writing a contemporary story from the black experience. That’s why my first book cover was the black and white one. I changed it to the one above because I didn’t want to seem like I was using race to my advantage. Also, I like colour more than black and white and there is a forest scene near the end of the book.

I’ve created a new book cover image for Save One. I changed because I wasn’t fully happy with the black and white one. I like colour and I think that it shows the tone of the book a little more. I’m also doing the eleventh edit and I’m hoping that this will be the last one 🙂

I did an edit sprinkle of my draft if that’s what you can call it. I put my book through the free version of Grammarly. I picked up quite a few things that caused me embarrassment. I spelt the word border wrong so many times and often missed out single words that needed to be added for improvement.

I’m going to have to do a few more drafts, but I’ve pretty much completed all of the structure, so it’ll just be line edits from now on.

I’ve just managed to finish the eight draft of this novella 🙂 It’s been a long time coming. I wasn’t going to be doing any editing at the moment, but after having a talk to one of my friend’s convinced me to push myself. I did 39 pages in one day and the other 15 the next day 🙂

Overall I didn’t need to do that much to it I think it might be ready with three more drafts. I don’t know exactly when I’ll put this one out, but I want it done and dusted by July. It is currently 32,500 words or 54 A4 pages.

It’s been over six months since I last touched this story. I’m so glad that I’m getting back to it because I want to get this done by my birthday in two months time.

The edits I’m doing are mostly line and word edits. No larger things like scene or chapter arrangements. I’m still iffy about the title, but I’m not sure what else to call it.

Currently, it’s 33,000 words and when I first wrote it I felt that I have improved a lot since my previous works. But now I’m seeing some things that I don’t like. Like how I’ve written some scenes. Or that I’ve referenced events sometime after they’ve supposedly occurred in the book. I think it’s going to take the readers by surprise and question why I’ve written it like that. I think I might have to go back and fix those in later drafts.